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David Campos for assembly, Wendy Aragon for City College board, soda, Muni money and the anti-speculation tax round out a controversial list of election 2014 ENDORSEMENTS. Plus: Yarrr, it's the Treasure Island Music Fest! And a new book collects George Kuchar's shouts and murmurs. Articles Online | Digital Edition

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During the far too long half-decade wait between albums, it became easy to wonder if maybe Nick Zammuto and Paul de Jong, together known as The Books, had lost some of their creative juices. Luckily, one listen to The Way Out proves the wait was well worth it. If anything, this is an album so meticulously thought out and crafted that the two years (they officialy began recording in 2008) it took to create makes complete sense. It’s clear now that it wasn’t a lack of ideas, but rather a surplus of them to work through that caused the delay. And the final product, 15 tracks spread over nearly 55 minutes, is some of the finest work of their career. Read more »

Enough of the silicon and studio lighting! Sex in San Francisco just isn't that scripted – or is it? Good Vibrations put its yearly call out to amateur filmmakers to turn in their own seven minutes and under blue films. Straight, gay, perverted, vanilla, the rainbow of oohs and aahs will show you what's really going on in your neighbor's bedrooms (the hots ones, obviously). But wait, that's next week. This week, you can attend the IXFF kick off party at El Rio, where clips of queer hipster porn will be showing and burlesque babies will shimmy and shake for your viewing pleasure. Look at it this way, if you're going to be squirming in anticipation, you might as well have a cheap Pabst Blue Ribbon in hand.

Well, hell, I thought, shutting Jonathan Safran Foer's book Eating Animals after reading its last page. There goes that. I have been a vegetarian (careful omnivore, pescatarian) off and on for fifteen years now. But having read the author of Everything is Illuminated and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close's latest offering, Safran Foer's exploration of the horrific world and consequences of our current addiction to factory farming, I realized I could no straddle the fence. There would be, I realized, no more salmon on my plate, or "cage-free" eggs, or cheddar cheese. Why? Well besides the whole institutionalized torture thing in most slaughterhouses-dairy farms-egg factories today, here's a fact to chew on: omnivores generate seven times more carbon emissions than vegan. And I can live without eggs and bacon. Call me Natalie Portman if you must. I chatted with Safran Foer over the phone about his lyrical horror story in anticipation of his SF appearances next week, including a benefit for 826 Valencia (Weds/22). He's no activist, but I like him.

Theresa Sparks says her first priority is jobs and public safety. She wants to more agressively pursue clean technology, with tax breaks if necessary. She wants more development in the district (but "smart development.") She argues that the city should do an "incubator," to really focus on new technologies.Read more »

The CPUC should investigate how PG&E has been spending the money it collects from ratepayers for maintenance and system upgrades

EDITORIAL In 1994, a fire raged through the tiny community of Rough and Ready in Nevada County. The inferno destroyed a dozen homes and caused $2 million in damage. The cause: tree limbs that Pacific Gas and Electric Co. should have trimmed brushed against high-voltage power lines.

A furious local district attorney filed criminal charges — and in a dramatic trial, evidence emerged that PG&E had intentionally taken $80 million in ratepayer money designated for tree trimming and diverted it into executive salaries and profits.

After a natural gas line that was installed in 1948 burst last week in San Bruno, killing five and devastating a community, local and state officials should be asking if the company is still taking money that should be spent upgrading and maintaining its system and spending it elsewhere.

Speaking at the San Francisco Mariott Hotel today, Sept. 14, to a room packed full of developers, land-use attorneys, building owners and managers, members of the San Francisco Convention & Visitor’s Bureau, and others who had gathered for a San Francisco Business Times event, Mayor Gavin Newsom championed a retail development project proposed for San Francisco’s mid-Market area that is being opposed by Livable Cities and the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition. The project will come under consideration at today’s Board of Supervisors meeting.Read more »

“Last time I played a show with no shoes I had to get stitches between my little toe and the next big toe. It sucked.” And so commenced Forrest Day's show at Slim's last Thursday Sept. 9, the group's frontman (also named Forrest Day) clad in two mismatched gym socks for safety. He was also wearing a dress that most likely resulted from a trip to the big Goodwill on South Van Ness – a flowy number with an attached denim faux vest that Grandma had a hard time parting with after she lost all that weight. So there he was, head shaven, straight outta San Leandro, a man that hardly needs a dress to stand out musically. Oh, and the music? How about that music...

Emily Murase has a lot on her plate. The mother of two daughters in the San Francisco public school system, she is also the executive director of the San Francisco Department on the Status of Women, a member of the Rosa Parks School Site Council, the Japanese Bilingual Bicultural Program Parent Teacher Community Council, and the Lowell Alumni Association Board of Directors; she also sits on the boards of the Lakeshore Acres Improvement Club, the San Francisco Girl Scouts, and Democratic Women in Action. Read more »

Last year's San Francisco Cocktail Weekwas a full-but-chill week of parties and cocktails at some of our best bars. This year, the fourth annual SF Cocktail Week steps it up with a whole slew of events I'm excited (and proud) to see us throwing in the name of the cocktail, especially as our city has been one of the two leading the cocktail renaissance long before the rest of the country caught on. Read more »

Editor's note: On Sept. 10, we posted a story called "Steve Moss, carpetbagger," explaining how a leading candidate for District 10 had had filed his intent to run for office while he still lived in another district. Moss sent us a response, which we're posting below (and our response to him follows that).Read more »

The San Francisco Chronicle used gigantic type on its front page two days in a row, and put out an entire special Sunday supplement on the San Bruno fire. The daily is struggling, but still has substantial staff, and this is a perfect daily-paper story -- a dramatic explosion, events unfolding quickly, compelling visuals, dozens of story angles.

And the new, much smaller online Bay Citizen is making the Chron look weak.Read more »

You are perhaps in the market for an accessory statement that mimics pink plastic unicorns jumping through your ears? Maybe a connected tube top-tutu smattered with a happy orgy of babydolls and hair-bows in the shape of a heart? Fret not, little cream-puff – your kawaii savior, Sebastian Masuda of Harajuku brand 6% DOKIDOKI (it's name is an onomatopoeia of a beating heart) will be making an appearance at New People's J-Pop Summit (Weds/15) for a lecture on Tokyo's “cute culture,” a fashion show featuring members of his store's famously, fabulously saccharine staff, and a glitz-tastic 6%DOKIDOKI pop-up store. The brand's focus on wide-eyed adorable and the shockingly juvenile has been termed “happy anarchy” by people that know about these things, so we shot Masuda some questions via email about what the hell he's up to. His answers were vague -- but they include the possibility of world salvation, so you might wanna check them out.